Even as Louisiana legislators reduced the impact of the inherent flaw of limits to campaign contributions this year, more work is needed on the expenditure side that reduces the uncertainty involved induced by the unelected state Board of Ethics.
Over the past year, elected officials have complained they have less certainty about what are allowable expenditures from political action committees in particular. This is because the legal standard is extremely open-ended on the campaign side, and on the PAC side there hasn’t been definition at all with the assumption that it matched that of the campaign side. PACs are allowed to spend on behalf of a candidate but must do so independently of a principal campaign committee for that candidate.
This summer, the Board, which oversees campaign disclosure, initiated a rules process that would limit PAC expenditures to exclude “expenditures for the purpose of supporting an elected official’s holding of public office or party position” or “expenditures for the benefit of a candidate that would be a personal use if made from a candidate’s campaign funds,” both of which can be done from a campaign account. However, the rule has yet to be made final with legislative leaders indicating they would exercise their veto power over it if made final.
The Board shouldn’t have the discretion to make such a momentous decision on this matter; more appropriately, lawmakers should which would cordon off the Board. That noted, legislation should pass into law basically the contents of this regulation trapped in the ether, and go farther by extending something like it to campaign accounts as well.
For too long almost anything has gone in the name of “holding of public office,” such as spending on car leases, tickets to athletic events and fine dining, and child care, clearly personal expenses barely connected to campaigning. A far better standard would be to adopt something like Washington’s tight list of allowable expenditures that would exclude things such as leases and events (although recently it unwisely included child care expenses, even as Louisiana passed on an attempt to do the same this year).
That could be part of a larger effort to make more modern campaign finance laws from earlier this year. Act 664 of 2024 made a number of changes to these, most significantly raising the ceilings on contributions to campaigns, parties, and PACs, to take effect in 2025. It’s never made sense to have any limits on contributions, because determined individuals can find way to essentially contribute to favored candidates and parties without limit through use of PACs, as well as there’s no good reason to restrict freedom of speech as it occurs through donations that express political preferences. There should be no contribution limits to campaigns, parties, or PACS, as long as there is full disclosure of every single donation.
But if you have to have limits, higher is better. Any transition to no limits, however, would be facilitated by tighter expenditure parameters where the public can be assured only genuine campaign activities would be paid for by donations and not encourage a lavish lifestyle. Within the new law the seeds of this exist, as it asks for study by the Board of best practices in other states, mentioning Washington by name but in context of technology.
The Board should come back by the Jan. 31 reporting deadline with technology and expenditure suggestions made by Washington, along with other states that circumscribe more greatly expenditures. If legislators afterwards still refuse to clamp down on personal expenditures by campaigns and PACs, it will not be like they weren’t aware of the better alternative.